My freshman year of college has just ended. I’ve made some great friends and some revelations about who I am as a person and where I stand on topics. I’ve also experienced other less tasteful parts about college. Through my classes, I’ve learned a great deal and faced my long held fears of dissection. Furthermore, I have felt my high school friends distance themselves further and further away while we enjoy our lives away from the suffocating small town atmosphere. I’m glad that it is over, yet I am excited to go back for my sophomore year.

Those that really know me know that I took a gap year after high school. It has been one of the funniest things to me to see their faces when I tell them I’m actually twenty years old because they expect that I’m eighteen or nineteen. My purpose to take the gap year was to work on myself as a person and to figure out what I wanted to do with myself or what major I wanted to pursue. Long story short, I still don’t know what career I want to go into. However, college gave me the opportunity to work on myself.

When I first moved in, I was scared and homesick for about the first two weeks. I also had expectations that I would be good friends with my roommate. Classes progressed well, I turned in every homework assignment and earned good grades. My seemingly good relationship with my roommate started to deteriorate about halfway through the first semester. I don’t know what happened or even if I had done something to cause it. Thankfully, my friends were around and allowed me to vent to them about recent events and give me escapes when I needed them. My second semester, I lucked out and ended up alone in a double room after my roommate got a room change for herself. Classes progressed even better the second semester and my friendships strengthened.

However, my high school friendships strained and thinned out. I hardly talked to people from back home anymore. My mom once told me that high school friends aren’t your life friends, but college friends are. Sadly, I finally understood why. We all left or stayed for college and became new people; we grew further and further apart as we met other people. As I felt my old friends distancing themselves and becoming their own people, I realized that it wasn’t that I was staying put, but we were all moving away from each other. It did make me sad, yet I knew it was going to happen. In the end, that is okay and is meant to happen.

I’ve made great friends in college. Some of us didn’t see each other every day or didn’t hang out with each other every weekend, but that wouldn’t matter as we would catch up during time before class or a meal. Other times we would hang out in someone’s room and watch movies. Sometimes a friend or two would annoy me with their way of doing things, but it would all be resolved in the end. Some of us are close and some may be far away, but I really hope as we progress through our college lives, we don’t lose touch.

I had no plans to get really involved in clubs during college, much like how I didn’t join many during high school. However, on a whim, I joined two clubs and while one failed to meet my expectations, another has become my favorite club to attend. Every meeting I went to was like an escape from my roommate during the first semester. The people in the club made me feel comfortable and have fun through laughter. It allowed to me to de-stress from my stressful roommate and gave me an opportunity to figure out who I am. Then, in the middle of my spring semester, I joined the Alpha Lambda Delta honor society and nominated myself for the position of Historian. Going from someone who didn’t want to be a large part of anything to now holding an executive position in an organization was rather rewarding for me.

College just ended last week and while I am enjoying my time at home with my dogs and family, I cannot help but say that I am excited for my next year to start. I have a lot of friends I’ll be returning to, and I’ll even be living with one. I’m planning several do-it-yourself projects to decorate the room to bring it more to life with color. With my full course load and my responsibilities as historian for an organization, I will be busy and probably a little strained. However, I will find the way to balance everything so I won’t be pressed for time and energy.